Baseball History, Commentary and Analysis

All 2-14 Seasons Are Not of Equal Value

If a pitcher posts a win-loss record of 2-14, it’s easy to assume he’s had a lousy year. With a record like that, he might even be looking for a new line of work in the off-season. Yet, strange as it may seem, there can be important qualitative differences between one 2-14 season and another.

To begin with, here are some raw stats for a pair of pitchers who each posted a 2-14 season in their career:

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12 thoughts on “All 2-14 Seasons Are Not of Equal Value”

I looked it up, Bill and V, and all I could find was that the line “million dollar arm and ten cent head” came from the movie “Major League.” I didn’t see that movie, but anyway, that movie came out in 1989, and I know that it wasn’t originally from that movie. I seem to remember Ralph Kiner quoting that line long before “Major League” came out. I’m pretty sure that the line came from a manager talking about a pitcher in real life, not in a movie. It sounds like something that Casey Stengel might have said.

I researched it further, and I found a thing that said that Met catcher Alex Trevino said it about Cincinnati pitcher Mario Soto. Maybe so, but I still doubt that he was the first one who said it.

I could swear that I’ve heard the line since the 1970s, and I have the feeling that it was said in the early days of big league baseball.

In fact, it sounds like something that manager Callahan might have said about pitcher Jack Keefe in Ring Lardner’s “You Know Me Al”. Callahan was always making biting remarks like that to the naive Keefe, who didn’t know that he was being kidded.

I also found it attributed to a sportswriter writing it about Sam McDowell.

Damn, Glen. That’s some serious research you’ve been up to. It could just be one of those apocryphal sayings that have been around forever, now more or less in the public domain. Perhaps we’ll never know where it originally came from. I wonder if the library attached to the Baseball HOF in Cooperstown would know? Could be worth finding out.
Thanks again,
Bill

At the time, I couldn’t believe it! I couldn’t believe that ANYONE would ever equal, let alone PASS, Roger Craig’s (Mets’ Hard Luck Loser) record for consecutive losses (18 in 1963). But Anthony Young did it. I was rooting for him NOT to do it, because Roger Craig was such a symbol of the futility of the Mets early years.

Speaking of Craig, I met him ten years ago at a Brooklyn Dodgers thing at a recreation center in Freeport, Long Island. I came all the way from where I was living at the time, in Syracuse, 300 miles away, to go to this. I also met Joan Hodges, the widow of Gil Hodges, Dick Williams, Joe Pignatano, and Johnny Podres. What a thrill!

But the BEST thing was meeting Tommy Holmes. I found my father with a rolled up newspaper, and Tommy Holmes was teaching him the best way to hit!!! (He had the National League hitting streak record until Pete Rose broke it). He spent a short time with the Dodgers; he was mostly with the Boston Braves. He told my father that he was going to mention him in his autobiography that he was working on. Sadly, I don’t think that Holmes ever finished the autobiography because he died not too long after that. He was a nice guy. My father said that he and Holmes were talking and kidding around for about a half-hour.

The BEST part of the day, at least for me, though, was when my father and I were sitting on this wall in the parking lot of the rec center, just sitting there, enjoying the day. I was wearing my Brooklyn Dodgers cap, and he was wearing an Ebbets Field cap. Well, this big amiable guy comes out of nowhere and pulled on the brim of my father’s cap and said, “I like this cap!” Then he comes over to me and he tugged on the brim of my Brooklyn Dodgers cap and said, “I like THIS one, too!” He then walked towards his car, a Cadillac. I hollered over to him, “Were you with the Dodgers?” and he just said, “Yeah!” Well, then I noticed the license plate on his car was an Indiana plate, and as he drove away, I realized that that guy was none other than CARL ERSKINE! What a great guy! And what a thrill that was, for both my father and me!